Alfred Jarry quotes

" God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. " # God # Freedom # Power

" We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings. " # Destructiveness # Success # Action

" We believe that the applause of silence is the only kind that counts. " # Applause # Silence # Belief

" Blind and unwavering undisciplined at all times constitutes the real strength of all free men. " # Discipline # Freedom # Constitutions

" It is because the public are a mass -- inert, obtuse, and passive -- that they need to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell from their bear-like grunts where they are -- and also where they stand. They are pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers, because they are fighting against intelligence. " # Audiences # Revolutions and Revolutionaries # Masses

" You're looking exceptionally ugly tonight, Madam, is it because we have company? " # Socializing and Socialism # Politics # Love

" It is conventional to call monster any blending of dissonant elements. I call monster every original inexhaustible beauty. " # Taste # Beauty # Originality

" The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots. " # Theater # Friends and Friendship # Life and Living

" The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character. " # Theater # Character # Passion

" To keep up even a worthwhile tradition means vitiating the idea behind it which must necessarily be in a constant state of evolution: it is mad to try to express new feelings in a mummified form. " # Tradition # Evolution # Ideas